


Hourglass

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bars and Pubs, Bartender Clarke Griffin, Bellamy/Various because speed dating, F/M, Implied Pre-John Murphy/Raven Reyes, Minor Bellamy Blake/Echo, Speed Dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 23:02:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: She pushes the flyer closer, until the corner of the page pokes against his arm. "Now have you considered, perhaps... a rebound?"Bellamy makes a show of looking at the piece of paper, then at Clarke again, back and forth with every bit of skepticism he can muster plastered across his face. "Speed dating?" he asks. "Have I considered speed dating?"Bellarke + Bartender!Clarke + Speed Dating for Bellarke BingoNominated for the Best Angst Fic under 8,000 Words in the 2019 Bellarke Fanwork Awards





	Hourglass

The bar has a refurbished industrial look: high ceilings with exposed steel crossbeams and visible air ducts, brick walls, and lightly scuffed, new hardwood floors. The barstools and chairs are made of metal, the tabletops and the bar itself a clean, polished wood. Behind the bar, glasses and mugs gleam, carefully arrayed on wooden shelving units, and on the other side of the room, a long line of tall windows looks out over cramped, dark buildings and a narrow side street, hints of a more majestic skyline in the distance. 

Bellamy finds the place on his third weekend in the city, because it's only a few blocks from the fourth-floor walkup he shares with two roommates, and he needs some fresh air, and he needs a drink. He's wary of it at first: stretching across the third floor of a repurposed old factory building, above a new microbrewery, it's sufficiently dirty on the outside but its windows offer too cheery a glow, nothing like the grimy, low-light, underground pub he used to frequent back in New York. But he heads inside anyway, and the dark cement of the stairs and the slightly damp scent of the walls, a rough gray brick, work to reassure him somewhat as he makes his way up. 

Inside, the patrons are celebrating St. Patrick's Day early, and he feels conspicuously dressed in his jeans and blue t-shirt, the heavy jacket he still needs against the chill aftershocks of winter. The bar is decorated with a fuzzy green garland, strings of blinking green lights flash off and on around the windows, and one of the bartenders is wearing a comically large green top hat and a button that says "Kiss me! I'm Irish!" Her t-shirt is also green, a large shamrock emblazoned across the front. 

Bellamy almost turns around and heads on home. But he really wants that drink. 

He pulls up a stool at the opposite end of the bar, closer to the second bartender. She is also wearing green, but her shirt is a swirl of neon tie-dye, with a small hole at the collar, like it's something she pulled out of her closet ten minutes before her shift. Her jeans are frayed through at the right knee, which looks artful, but also genuine, and when she climbs up on a barstool to grab a wine glass, he notices she’s paired them with high-top black Chuck Taylors. He appreciates that she seems not quite as fully in the spirit of the holiday as the others, except for her hair—which is cut short and dyed a bright, eye-popping green, the shade of a sour apple gummy bear—and her headband, which is a deep emerald color, and has two small shamrocks attached to it on springs, like antennae. 

When she turns to ask him what he's having, the shamrocks shake and sway with wild abandon. 

He can't stop staring at them, the unsteady hypnotic movement of them, and so it takes him several moments too long to realize the bartender has sharp blue eyes and that she's fixed them squarely on his face. 

"My eyes are down here," she says, and if he were a lesser man, he'd blush at the way she's smirking at him. 

He orders a beer—"Whatever's on tap"—and when she slides his mug over to him, he says, "You're really going all out for the holiday, aren't you?" 

The bartender tilts her head to the side, slightly quizzical. "I'd say this is pretty tame." 

"It's Saturday. St. Patrick’s Day is on Tuesday." He gestures vaguely toward her hair. "And I wouldn't call that color tame." 

She shrugs. "Oh, well. Any excuse to try something new." She doesn't wink at him, as she says it, but the way she smiles creates the same effect. 

He'd like to ask for her name, doesn't only because he knows this friendliness is just part of her job, and he doesn't want to be that creep who mistakes a bit of flirtiness for actual interest. She's between patrons, though, hasn't put any distance between them, even though she could. So he gestures to her shirt and says, "I notice you're not wearing a _Kiss Me, I'm Irish_ pin." 

Her smile narrows at that, becomes subtly sly. Then she rests her hands on the bar and leans in closer, glances surreptitious from side to side before catching his eye. “That’s because—just between you and me—I'm not Irish." 

She manages to keep a mostly straight face, her words stage-whispered like a confession. Bellamy has to take a long drink to hide the smile that's twitching at the corners of his lips. "Ah. I thought it was because you didn't want any weird guys trying to cross a line or take advantage. Which probably happens enough anyway, given your line of work." 

He says this as casually as he can, looks mostly down into his beer, and only up at the last moment to see if he can read any hints on her face. He’d like to know his own location, _vis-a-vis_ the line. 

She stands up straight again, crossing her arms against her chest and looking at him. "It happens some," she admits. "But this is a pretty chill place. Why?" She cocks an eyebrow up. "Do you have nefarious plans?" 

He raises his hands up, palms out in surrender. "Me? Never. I'm innocent as the driven snow. Also new here," he admits, letting his hands fall down again into his lap. "And there's a fine line between meeting new people and..." 

"Appearing desperate to meet new people?" 

"Yeah." He exhales, a long breath he hadn't realized he was holding, crosses his arms against the top of the bar and wraps his hand around his mug. The bartender is watching him again, this time with a slight appraising expression, a narrowness about the eyes that makes him nervous, as if he were a specimen pinned beneath glass. 

"I'm Clarke," she announces, abruptly, her voice so serious and formal that the awkward moment of consideration abruptly breaks, and the tense hold of his nerves along with it. 

"Bellamy," he answers. He's rolling her name around on his tongue, the hard angles of it, the way it fits so well the sharp, knowing glint in her eyes. 

"See, now you know at least one person in town," she says. "I bet you feel less lonely already." 

"Oh, yeah, definitely. Now that I know you, and my roommates, and my coworkers—and a few dozen teenagers." 

Clarke raises her eyebrows. "A few dozen teenagers?" 

"Also from work. I'm a high school teacher." 

"Ah—I see. I was picturing some sort of Pied Piper figure for adolescents. This is much less creepy." 

Bellamy shrugs. “No, that’s roughly how I see myself: a charismatic but subtly untrustworthy figure leading them down the dangerous roads of American and World History.” 

“Charismatic and untrustworthy, huh? I guess you’re not so innocent after all.” She tilts her head, and the shamrocks on her headband bob and shake. Another patron has sat down at her end of the bar, and she’s already taking a step back, sliding away. But she points her finger at him as she does. “I’ll have to keep that in mind. Watch out, Bellamy, because I have my eye on you.” 

* 

Within a month, the bar has become the center of his social scene, and the time he spends with Clarke is the highlight of his week. Their conversations are intermittent by necessity: jokes exchanged while she pours him a drink; scraps of stories in the pauses and lulls of the evening, when she's not as busy, and can linger for a few minutes at his end of the bar. But she always flashes him a wide smile when she sees him enter from the stairwell, and every time he catches sight of her, chatting with one of the other patrons, leaning over the bar, laughing, her green hair starting to fade out to blonde again, something loosens in his chest and threatens to float free. This feeling is not unlike the kind that used to hit him when he was in the throes of a schoolyard crush: giddy and intense but wholly innocent, and so incongruous, now, among his other adult feelings, that for a long while he cannot even place it for what it is. 

Over time, in bits and pieces, they learn about each other. She tells him that she was pre-med in college, but never applied to med school, that she went to art school for a year instead before she quit. From this biography, he gathers that she comes from money. She tells him that the bartender gig, and splitting the rent of her two-bedroom with a roommate, allows her to leave her trust fund untouched—Bellamy's eyes bug out at the phrase 'trust fund' and she looks briefly abashed—but admits that the existence of this secret horde of money serves as a useful safety net. The sense of security it provides has value, even if she doesn’t think about it often. Her honesty and clear-eyed view of her own luck is something he can respect, even though, after she darts off to attend to a woman at the other end of the bar, he finds himself staring down at a smooth whorl in the wood next to his glass and turning the phrase _trust fund_ around on his tongue, trying to fit together the disparate pieces he knows of her into one understandable whole. 

Bellamy doesn't want to tell her about the debt he still carries from college, or about the basement apartment he grew up in, or the years he shared a bedroom with his little sister. He doesn't want her to pity him, or to place where he came from above where he is. So he sticks to entertaining stories about substitute teaching, how he's filling in for the rest of the semester for another teacher who's on medical leave, how awkward it is to step in to a room of freshmen and sophomores, who think they're experts on high school and thus experts on everything, as the new guy, as the sub, and try to make history seem present and alive. "Especially when it seems so obviously interesting to me," he adds, and Clarke grins. 

"Because you're a history nerd," she says, with a sage and knowing nod of her head. "I was a science nerd, so I can tell." 

"I thought you were an art nerd." 

"Oh—I'm a woman of many and surprising talents." 

He can't argue with her about that, since he's already lost two debates with her about the relative quality of different craft beers; enjoyed several cocktails mixed by her hand, none of which he would ever have tried but for her; and seen a partial gallery of her art as displayed on her phone. She let him swipe through for a good five minutes, distracted from hovering by the arrival of a handful of college students, seemed pleased but not surprised at the genuine compliments he paid as he slid the phone back into her hand. She'd already told him she does some freelance work on the side. A few weeks later, she admits that she longs for her own gallery show. 

He tells her that he'll be the first one through the door on opening night, and swears he can see a soft shade of pink tinge across her cheeks. 

She changes the subject, then, faster than he expected her to, giving him an update on the saga of her roommate and the police academy entrance exam. He's been waffling for months on whether or not he should apply—"His father is a cop," Clarke explains, "and he's always rolling his eyes at himself and asking 'why am I considering this?' and then telling me he's _not_ dramatic—"—and is currently leaning toward, rather than against. Bellamy's been keeping her abreast on the drama in his building, too: the break ups and make ups of the couple in the apartment above him, and the incessant snarky flirtation in his own living quarters. 

"You're entering the danger zone," she warns, after he recounts a particularly heated exchange of sarcasm in the kitchen. "Roommate-cest is the most fraught of all potential romantic relationships." 

He wants to ask her what her feelings are on bartender/patron hookups, but she sounds like she's speaking from some bitter experience, so lets his curiosity lead him down a different route. "Do you ever think you and your roommate will—" 

"He's gay. So, no." She points to his empty glass. "Up for a refill?" 

The next week, he brings Raven and Murphy with him to the bar's monthly experiment of a trivia night, and Clarke amends her previous calculation. "You need to be on high alert," she whispers surreptitiously to him, when he comes over to order a round for their table. He feels weird enough, sitting in the middle of the room, instead of his usual spot at the bar, and there's something equally comfortable and exciting about the way Clarke leans in, catches his eye, and lowers her voice. At first, he has no idea what she's talking about. All he can see are the sharp specks of light blue in her eyes. "Are they competitive types? Because they're like one up-from-behind win away from an excited, celebratory hook-up." 

Bellamy lets go of the breath he was holding, darts his gaze down to their drinks, then over his shoulder. Murphy and Raven are leaning their heads together, whispering. "She is," he admits. "The competitive type. But I'm pretty sure we're in last place at the moment, so at least there's that consolation." 

Clarke shakes her head, a serious gaze fixed on his face. "You never know," she says. Her hand curls around his wrist, a moment's insistent touch, a brief squeeze of her fingers, then gone. "Good luck, Bellamy." 

She might mean _good luck_ _losing_ or _good luck winning_ or even just _good luck living with those two_, but all he needs is good luck thinking about anything other than the careful, serious expression on her face, how she can look at him without smiling or blinking or breaking his gaze, how she surprised him so utterly and so completely with a single, unexpected touch of her hand. 

His team gets the next six questions right and moves to the middle of the pack, where they stay, floundering, for the rest of the night. Bellamy is not any help at all. Almost every time he glances toward the bar, he notices Clarke glancing back at him. 

On the way home, Raven links her arm through his and asks, "What's going on with you and the bartender?" and he almost trips over the sidewalk, which is answer enough. 

"Nothing—" 

"Something," Murphy cuts in, from several paces ahead of them—as if Bellamy needed to be ganged up on right now. 

"We're friends," he says. But his voice is so insistent and so loud that he doesn't blame them for laughing. He's not lying, but he's not answering the question, either. At this point, even being honest with himself, he’s not sure that he knows how. 

* 

He considers asking her out, but the timing never seems right. The emotional risks have not been fully calculated. What does he stand to lose, if she says no? 

Then one overcast morning in May, the sky blurred with dark, heavy clouds that foretell another day of rain, his car won't start, and his neighbor gives him a ride to work on her motorcycle. Her hair smells like vanilla and the deep, ashen scent of smoke. When she lets him off at the front of the school, his legs still shaky, he hands her back the helmet she'd lent him and thanks her for the lift. Then suggests he pay her back with drinks sometime. The words feel like no more than an extension of the way he'd wrapped his arms around her, pressed himself against her back, held his breath as she took wide sweeps around the corners, his heart pounding in his ears. He doesn’t overthink them. 

She suggests Friday. 

And from there, his life, like a roller coaster car, climbing inexorably to its zenith and then falling, with ever-gathering and utterly exhilarating speed, begins to move so fast he can no longer discern the rise from the descent. Events build upon themselves. He never stops to consult his mind but only follows the whims of his heart. 

He drops by the bar less often, and then, as the May rains clear, and school lets out, and the summer temperatures rise and rise, he stops showing up at all. 

* 

Two weeks into September, he drags himself up the familiar stairs again. The stairwell still smells of cool concrete and the stomp of his boot soles still echoes up to the high ceiling; the sound of bar patrons on the floor above still wafts faintly down through the open door. In his arms and legs is the residual weakness that comes from hours of carrying boxes up interminable flights of stairs, and he's tired, and he needs something familiar that does not also make him feel sad. 

He wonders if Clarke is working tonight. She should be. But it's been a while. Maybe she's changed shifts; maybe she's moved on. 

He sees her before he's walked more than a half dozen steps in from the door, several seconds before she catches sight of him. She's grown out her hair, and dyed it again. It falls past her shoulders in shining red waves, the sides pulled back from her face so that he can see her profile, the easy way she smiles as she pours a drink for one of the men at the bar. She's wearing a dark red t-shirt and a necklace he doesn’t recognize: an hourglass pendant on a long chain. She looks beautiful. Something of that well-worn spring feeling rises again in his lungs, but the old buoyancy is gone. A heavy tinge of worry and regret, a shading of guilt, has threatened the innocence of it. He recognizes it at last for what it really is: a complicated, adult feeling, one that may last or may fade but which will, either way, leave its mark. 

He doesn't fully expect her to smile when she notices him. She does, but there's a distance, a strain, in her expression. He walks over and takes his old seat the far left end of the bar, and she slides into place across from him and says, "Hi, stranger. I haven't seen you in a while." 

"Yeah, I—" 

_I'm sorry?_ Is that what he owes her? 

"I know." He ducks his head for a brief moment, looks back up and finds that she's still watching him, biting the corner of her lip. Whatever smile she'd tried to offer at first has slipped from her face, and when he meets her eye, she drops her gaze and breathes in deep. "I know," he says again. "I—moved out of the neighborhood, actually." 

Clarke raises her eyebrows, the corners of her mouth down-turned. "That was fast. Didn't you just get here?" 

"Yeah." He crosses his arms on top of the bar, his shoulders hunching up toward his ears. Nothing in her tone reads like accusation. At most, perhaps, like surprise. He still feels like he's making a confession. "My girlfriend and I got a place together—" 

"Girlfriend?" 

He glances up at her, sees only pure shock on her face. 

"Ex-girlfriend," he corrects. "That's why I'm back here. I mean—” _Shit_. “We broke up, and she kept the apartment, and I moved back in with Raven and Murphy." 

Clarke doesn't answer for several long moments. She's frowning slightly, and her expression is distant, as if she were running through a series of calculations in her head. 

"So," she says, abruptly, and then cuts herself off. Starts speaking again only slowly, each word precisely formed. "So—you moved in together in the spring, and now it's September, and you're broken up." 

He nods, once. His face feels like it's burning a brilliant shade of red. 

"That must have been a whirlwind." She sounds a little disapproving, but also a little impressed. 

Bellamy finds himself smiling, just out of the corner of his mouth at first and despite himself, even though he knows he's only laughing at his own expense. _Whirlwind_, he thinks, is only the half of it, and yet also the most succinct and perfect explanation of the season, how the last warm months have picked him up and thrown him around and now set him back, still dizzy, on his feet, waiting for the cool breezes of autumn to blow him back to his right senses again. 

"We moved in together at the beginning of June,” he says, “and I just moved back into my old place today so.... yeah, basically, it was like going away to summer camp." 

Clarke snorts, hides a too-loud snap of laughter behind her hand, and his own smile softens. She looks adorable, and he wants to make her look like that again. 

"Summer, camp, but with sex," he adds, and she barks out another, louder, laugh. All of the tension is gone from her frame now, gone from the room, even gone from the hunch of Bellamy's shoulders and the slowly untangling knot in his gut, and he thinks that perhaps they are okay. 

Clarke passes her hand over her face and then, catching her breath, sets both of her palms on the top of the bar. She looks at him and says, perfectly straight-faced, "Hey, I don't know what kind of boring camp experience _you_ had, but mine was basically a cross between a soap opera and a bacchanal." 

"A bacchanal? Fuck, I must have gone to the wrong one." He snaps his fingers, fakes an exaggerated, disappointed grimace as he hangs his head. "If only I had a time machine." 

Clarke makes a face, a combination of raised eyebrows and pursed lips. He knows her well enough to recognize it as one of her judgmental expressions, of which she has many. "Bellamy, if you used a time machine to go back to _high_ _school_, we would really have to have words." 

He could shoot some quick remark back at her, except she’s already shaking her head and turning away, busying herself pouring a mug of beer at the taps behind her, and this is lucky, because her last remark has flipped a switch in him, hit him with a sorry realization in the same way that some innocuous moments, throwaway words or random sights or scents, bring up sudden, heartache flashes of the past. His own face falls, and he sighs under his breath, looking down at the bar and the fine lines of polished wood. She's right, of course. If he had a time machine, he wouldn't take it back to adolescence. He'd travel just a few months into the past, and be a little braver, or a little smarter, or a little more reckless but in a different, better way. 

"That's true," he says. He doesn't know what he'll say next but he wants to speak before she turns around again. He flicks his gaze up, head still bowed, catches a glimpse of her fire-red hair and the edge of her arm. "I mean, I definitely have some regrets a little closer to home—" 

Above him: the sound of Clarke clearing her throat, and the distinctive bright thud of glass settling on wood. The glow of amber in a tall mug, and then the whisper of a piece of paper sliding across the bar to him. "Here," Clarke says. Her voice has taken on a curt, distant quality, a touch too loud: a voice to break this moment with, a sturdy voice to build a wall between them, as if she understood him perfectly and wants to save him from confessing too much. He glances up and catches her eye, and swears he sees sadness there, regret of her own, mixed in with the warning. "No use living in the past, is there?" 

She gestures down to the piece of paper, and Bellamy sits up straight, drops his gaze down to scan across the page. She's given him a flyer, a neon green photocopy with the words SPEED DATING typed in thick block letters across the top. A slight cursive addition, _Gender_ _Neutral_, has been added, a pretend afterthought, in the top left corner, just above the word SPEED. Details below list a date and time, the address of the bar itself, and an ominous warning: _mixer to follow_. 

Bellamy stares at the flyer for a long beat. A string of little hearts decorates the border. The words _Speed Dating _are so bold and so tall that they read as a threat. 

_Hand it to Clarke_, he thinks, _to come up with the least subtle hint_. 

He meets her eye, sees that she’s staring at him, her expression so expectant that he cannot be sure he reads nervousness in it, too, or if this is only wishful thinking. Whatever sort of tension this is, seeping back in, he needs to break it. So he points at the glass mug and says, deadpan, "I didn't order this." 

It’s not enough to calm the sick, embarrassed feeling roiling in him, but at least the held-breath pause between them lets itself go. 

A genuine smile breaks across Clarke’s face, and she answers, with easy confidence, “But you were going to.” Still lacking in subtlety, she pushes the flyer closer, until the corner of the page pokes against his arm. "Now have you considered, perhaps... a rebound?" 

Bellamy makes a show of looking at the piece of paper, then at Clarke again, back and forth with every bit of skepticism he can muster plastered across his face. "Speed dating?" he asks. "Have I considered speed dating?" 

"Gender neutral speed dating," she corrects, pointing to the curlicue letters at the top left. 

"I don't even know what that is." 

"It's like regular speed dating, except that instead of dividing participants up into men and women, we draw names randomly and assign people to the sitting group or the moving group." He must seem unconvinced, because she adds, after a moment, "All sexualities welcome, of course. We were thinking of having little cards that you could set out or take with you, explaining what you're looking for—" 

"It's not that. I'm not afraid of having a ten-minute date with a man." He drops his hands down to his lap, aware of the decidedly dejected slump this gives his shoulders. He can hardly stand to look at her face, the slight part in her lips, the open and curious set of her eyes. "It's the whole concept." 

"Dating again?" Her tone is so sympathetic that it makes him a little ill, like maybe this is an act she's putting on for him. Like speed dating is something she's trying to sell. "I get that, but... Look, if you do want to get yourself out there again, this is such an efficient way to do it." 

"Efficient?" He has to hold back a bubble of laughter, despite himself. Only Clarke would think about efficiency in the aftermath of heartbreak. 

"_Yes_." 

He takes a long drink, hiding his smile at the way she doubles down. 

"Or you could think of it as a test run. One night, a few minutes each with a few strangers—maybe something will click, maybe it won't. But at least you'll see if..." The strong confidence drains from her words, an unexpected sadness in the way she trails off, an awkwardness in the flicker of her gaze away from him. She shrugs. "If, you know, you're even ready to date again." 

Around them, the chatter of other patrons creates a steady background noise, and yet the sound of Bellamy placing his mug back down against the bar seems obscenely loud, an improper punctuation to the silence between them. He watches the way the liquid trembles against the sides of the glass, how the lights pick out bright notes in the amber. Clarke is watching him, he knows; he can feel her stare, how she is trying to read him, the way she is holding her breath and waiting for him to speak. 

"So you think that, instead of going on _one_ date to see if I'm ready, I should go on a bunch of dates, and that will...somehow...be easier?" 

Clarke exhales, and manages a soft, slight smile. "Yes. That's what I'm saying. Just consider it, okay? It's something new we're trying out and I don't want it to fail." She slides her hand across the bar and briefly squeezes his arm, just above his wrist. Whether the gesture is genuine or just part of her pitch, he isn't sure, but it makes a subtle heat rise up along his skin. 

Bellamy takes another drink so that he won't immediately have to reply, and just nods. "Fine, okay. I'll consider it, all right?" 

Clarke holds up her hands, perfectly innocent. "Just give it some thought. That's all I ask." 

* 

He ends up assigned to the sitting group. 

Even as he takes his seat, he wonders if it's too late to change his mind and drop out. Leaving the event with an uneven number of participants seems unfair, though, both to the group and to Clarke. She's the moderator and timekeeper for the night, a small detail she had not shared with him in advance, and which absolutely does not increase his overall uncertainty about the evening. Now she's standing behind a table that’s been set up next to the windows, shuffling through papers while the eleven women and nine men who are the night's unlucky victims mill around the two long, parallel tables in front of her. Bellamy's spot is at the left side table, closest to the window. Closest to her. He wonders if she's nervous and then decides, if she is, her butterflies have nothing on his. He's about to sit through ten first dates in a row. 

Ten first dates. Nine minutes each. Ninety minutes of his life. 

He tells himself that this is nothing but it feels like more like torture, or maybe like facing down a firing squad. He rests his hands on the tabletop, fingers linked neatly together, then decides this makes him look like a schoolboy and drops them down to his lap instead. 

Clarke calls everyone to attention and directs the last stragglers from group one to find their seats. She's wearing cargo pants and a faded concert tee from 2006, and her hair pulled back in a neat braid that curls over her shoulder. Already she's brandishing her stopwatch like a grenade. Just watching her makes Bellamy feel like he's in the ninth grade, unaccountably nervous at the sight of a pretty girl, living again through those days when the only bits of confidence he had were faked. 

The moving group are directed to their first partners, Clarke's voice rising in strident tones above the shuffling of feet and the scraping of chairs. Bellamy's date is a pretty blonde woman in a floral dress and a jean jacket. She looks at least as nervous as he feels, which should be a relief, but isn't. 

Ten dates, he tells himself. An hour and a half. The length of a short movie. And maybe, best case, Clarke will end up being right in the end: maybe this experience will help him put space between him and Echo at last, space that will allow him to feel like he is moving forward instead of falling back in retreat. Like he's building something new instead of failing, because packing up his stuff and shoving it back into the same shitty car that broke down on the morning they met did feel like failure, an admission of the noxious arrogance and desperation that had swallowed him up and spit him out. 

He just wants a clean slate. He wants to try again. 

"Let the dating officially begin!" Clarke declares, and clicks her stopwatch with a flourish, holding it high above her head. 

The girl across from Bellamy doesn't immediately speak, and neither does he. When they do break the silence, they open their mouths and attempt an introduction at exactly the same time. 

_What an auspicious start._

"I'm Harper," the woman says, again, with an embarrassed smile, and holds her hand out across the table. 

"Bellamy." Her skin is warm and soft, her hand so small that it disappears in his grip. "And if you haven't already guessed, this is my first speed date." 

"What a coincidence! Mine too." 

She's only been in the city a few weeks, she tells him, with an air of confession that quickly shades into relief, like this is a secret she has long wanted to get off her chest. She graduated last May, and now she's living completely on her own for the first time, without either her family or her college friends for support. They bond over the disorienting, lonely feelings that always well up at the beginning of new chapters in life. 

Bellamy quickly learns that most of the speed daters are searching for some variant of this: either a fresh start, or a sense of stability in an uncertain time, or both. People who are new to the city or the neighborhood. People who are just out of school. People crawling free of the immediate messy aftermath of a breakup, just like he is. 

He meets Maya, an art history grad student who spends their nine minutes giving him museum recommendations, and Monty, who strikes Bellamy as slightly uptight and very awkward, until he mentions that he could really use a joint, and also that this is his first date with a man. That weight lifted, he’s more than willing to exchange horror stories about apartment living, public transportation, and their respective brief stints in New York. 

After Monty is Niylah, with whom Bellamy has nothing in common—except, as she lets him know as soon as she sits down, that they are both attracted to women, which does not turn out to be a strong basis for conversation. He gets along better with Miller, an ex-delinquent with whom he shares stories of his own disaffected youth. They talk for nearly the whole nine minutes before Bellamy finds out that he's sitting across from Clarke's roommate, and by then it's too late to ask after his policy academy plans. 

In a rash moment, earlier in the week, Bellamy had convinced both of his roommates to show up to speed dating with him, and while Raven is sitting just to Bellamy's right, not making the rounds of the room, Murphy dos eventually slide into the seat across from him. He begins their date by earnestly proposing marriage. 

"Maybe you should try that one on Raven instead," Bellamy suggests, loud enough for her to hear, and Murphy turns a deep red and mutters: 

"I’m beginning to think you don’t love me at all.” 

With Gina, Bellamy discusses the joys and sorrows of teaching, and with Monroe, he complains bitterly about his ex. Emori tries to convince him to get a tattoo, or at least some sort of interesting piercing—a lip ring perhaps, or a nose stud? 

His last date is with a beautiful but intimidating woman named Luna, by which time he is completely exhausted. He gets her talking about her handknit cardigan and homemade jewelry, which turns out to be more fascinating than he’d initially supposed, until Clarke rings her bell an unprecedented three times and announces that the event is at its end. 

* 

Fifteen minutes before close, Bellamy returns to the bar to settle his tab. Clarke is behind the register, and as soon as she sees him, she straightens up, pushes her braid over her shoulder, and arranges her features into a neutral, lightly curious expression. She's nervous, he thinks. And though he doesn't know why anything in this moment should make her ill at ease, it's oddly endearing nonetheless. Just being in her presence again makes him smile. 

"So?" she asks, as she prints out his receipt. "Did you have a good time?" She keeps her voice perfectly even, as if she didn't care at all, but she avoids his eye as she hands him a pen. 

"Yeah—actually, I did," he admits. "I wouldn't say I found the love of my life, but—" 

He hands her back the pen and the receipt, but it takes a moment for Clarke to reach out and take them back. "I saw you talking to the woman with curly hair," she says, nodding over his shoulder to the last of the speed daters, who are putting on their coats and getting ready to leave. 

"Who? Gina?” He glances back, briefly. “Yeah, she teaches elementary school in my district. So we had a lot of mutual complaining about the administration to do." He shrugs. "We didn't connect in that way, though, if that's what you're asking. Romantically." 

"Why not?" 

He smiles: the question, stark and abrupt, sounds like part of an interrogation. "Because... there wasn't any spark." He nods, affirming the answer to himself. It sounds right. Clarke is frowning that grumpy little frown of hers, a confused wrinkle forming between her brows, but he doesn't know any better way to explain. "I didn't really feel that way with anyone. But you were right." He leans one elbow on the bar, his back to the quickly dissipating final stragglers, focuses his attention squarely on her. "I'm glad I tried it.” 

"Yeah?" She's still holding herself in check, he can tell, allowing only carefully measured bits of interest to seep into her voice. She picks up a cloth and shoos him away from the bar, so she can start to clean up for the night. "Why's that?" 

"I mean I think I know what I'm looking for now." He pulls himself up onto one of the bar stools, hands in his lap while he watches her work. Because she's busy, because she can pretend she is focused on the task in front of her, and he can pretend she is not really listening to him, it's easier to tell the truth. It's easier to settle into words this feeling that has been growing in him all night, sharper and clearer with each new date. 

"What you're looking for," Clarke repeats. She's scrubbing maybe a little too hard at non-existent stains, studiously avoiding looking at him, while he keeps his gaze steadily and thoughtfully on her. "What would that be?" 

"With Echo," he says, "with my ex, everything was exciting and wild and unexpected all the time. And that was fun. But relationships like that, they get old fast. The excitement calms down and then you're just... you’re stuck with each other and a bed you don't know how to put together and a couple of plants you never remember to water. It just feels very hollow. Like you don’t know how to be, without the adventure. And I’m tired of that. I want something reliable and solid and real." 

Clarke stops in her movements, sets the cloth down on the bar and looks up at him, looks him square in the face for the first time. At the far end of the room, the door closes with a slow whoosh and a click. The only other person left is Clarke's co-worker, who is pushing the last of the tables back into place. Clarke calls over Bellamy's shoulder that she'll lock up, and the co-worker flashes her a brief thumbs up. 

"So you're saying,” Clarke says, “that you want a simple, low key, domestic relationship.” 

He considers a moment, pretending to search out the answer in a spot of wall beyond her shoulder. "Yeah. Yes. I think that's exactly what I'm saying." 

Clarke narrows her eyes at him. "Boring old man." 

He laughs, incredulous and sharp. “Oh, that’s what I am?” Then he leans forward again, into her space, with his arms crossed on top of the bar. "Well, then what about you? What do you want?" 

She doesn’t flinch, only mirrors his position, stares straight at him and pretends a moment of thoughtfulness. "I suppose,” she admits, an incongruous, quiet confession to her voice, “pretty much the same." 

Bellamy grins. "Boring old lady." 

She straightens up and throws the cloth at him, and it hits him square in the chest. "At least you admit I'm a lady." 

* 

They keep talking, as Clarke takes her time cleaning up, long after her coworker has left, long after official closing time. She tells him about her exes; about her fraught relationships with her parents and her stepdad; awful stories from art school, complete with impressions. He tells her about his mom’s boyfriends; about the man he thinks might be his father; about his sister, who’s living out in Colorado now, and is terrible about calling and keeping in touch. When she cannot stall any longer, she asks him if he would like to go to her place for a cup of coffee. She’s leaning against the door that leads to the stairwell, her jacket zipped up all the way to her chin, a scarf in the colors of the bi pride flag draped evenly around her shoulders. Even after sunset, the September air offers no more than the beginning of a crisp, stark chill, but she’s already made fun of him for wearing only a hoodie, unzipped. 

“Coffee?” he asks, pulling a face. “At this hour?” 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The corners of her mouth dip into an exaggerated expression of concern, and she reaches out to squeeze his arm in gentle conciliation. “Is it too late for caffeine? I have herbal tea, too.” 

“Shut up,” he says, but his voice is fond. She’s still touching his arm, and he shifts a little closer, trying to take in every detail of her features in the dim light. All of the bar lights are off, now, and only the glow from the stairs remains, shining in through the narrow window of the door. “We already know I’m an old man. You don’t need to rub it in.” 

“You’re right, you’re right.” She reaches out for his other arm, then slides her hands down until she is holding his hands. Swings them back and forth between them. He only realizes she’s stepping forward when he hears the bar across the door creak, relieved of the pressure of her weight. “I really would like to keep talking,” she says, and he just nods. She is staring at his lips. He is already leaning in. 

When he kisses her, in the same moment that she rises up onto her toes to kiss him, their fingers still twined together between them and her mouth soft and opening gently against his mouth, he can think only that he has waited for this moment for a long time. An exhale, after a long-held breath. A moment of peace, after months of longing. Clarke lets go of his hands and wraps her fists in the front of his hoodie, and tugs him, not yet breaking their kiss, through the door. It closes with a heavy, settling sound behind them. Near silence follows, broken only by the faint thump of their footsteps down the stairs. Then even this sound fades. And only quiet and shadows are left in their wake. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can also find me on tumblr @kinetic-elaboration. Click [here](https://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/187274702355/hourglass-bellamyclarke-modern-au-8k-she-pushes) for an accompanying moodboard.


End file.
